How Far Do You Agree That Hitler and Mussolini Shared the Same Views and Controlled Their Respective Countries in the Same Dictatorial Way?

Both Hitler and Mussolini shared similar ideology and used similar styles of leadership to control their countries, although despite this their working and personal relationship was not always friendly. The two were both wartime leaders and so resultantly had to deal with many issues that clearly revealed similarities but also differences in their personalities, and exposed repeating likenesses in their dictatorial methods.

Mussolini and Hitler's similar beliefs and ideas are important when looking at how they controlled their countries as their beliefs had a great influence on their priorities and the lengths they were prepared to go to for their ideal society. They both believed that a country should have one strong leader, they both had anti-Semitic ideas and they both had a strong nationalistic and fascist approach. They both wanted absolute and indisputable power and supported a dictatorial government where every other person in the country lay below them, and they most certainly lacked in sympathy for the people. Hitler and Mussolini had shared ideas of a 'revolutionary project' envisaging a new, better and, in Hitler's case, more 'pure' society, with a focus of national unity. Their views, though, are unsurprisingly not identical and differ slightly in that Mussolini believed strongly that a woman's role was to build a home for a family and were subservient to men, later furthered by his want for a larger population. Hitler did himself share these conservative ideas but never drastically acted upon them, and even encouraged and supported the participation of women in industry and production. Mussolini's extreme views can be traced back to the strong influence of the Catholic Church in Italy, where in comparison Germany had less of a religious uniform.